The System Improvement Process (SIP)

Definition

The System Improvement Process was developed from scratch to solve large-scale difficult social problems, especially the sustainability problem. The process provides problem solvers with a "fill in the blanks" framework that makes work much more focused and efficient. The process is summarized in this diagram:

Strategy

Most people have great difficulty determining what matters and what doesn't when solving a problem in an area they are unfamiliar with. How can you separate the wheat from the chaff? How can you find the 20% so you can apply the 80-20 rule? If you can't determine what matters and study that, then you can't solve the problem.

SIP is a guiding framework. It asks three strategic questions:

1. What are the critical subproblems?

2. What are the root causes of each subproblem?

3. What are the high leverage points for resolving the root causes?

Everything else follows from these questions. Each is a "find what matters" question that builds on the question before it. When you've answered all three questions you're done with the analysis. You've found what matters. After that, converging on solutions to push on the high leverage points is relatively easy.

The three subproblems

First the one big problem is defined in Problem Definition. Then the one big problem is decomposed into the three subproblems present in all difficult social problems:

A. How to overcome change resistance. Presently the human system is strongly resisting changing from unsustainable to sustainable behavior.

B. How to achieve proper coupling. Presently the human system is improperly coupled to the environment. The feedback loops necessary for sustainable environmental impact are simply not there.

C. How to avoid excessive model drift. The model governments use to run themselves is incapable of solving the sustainability problem. It has drifted so far from what's needed that it's broken.

Without this decomposition the problem is insolvable because you are trying to simultaneously solve all three subproblems at the same time without realizing it. That's one reason why the environmental movement has been unable to solve the sustainability problem. Environmentalists are blind to the need to treat "How to overcome change resistance" as a separate problem and solve that first. Once change resistance is overcome the system will "want" to be sustainable. It will eagerly adopt proper coupling solutions like carbon taxes, strict pollution laws, and sustainable product life cycle design.

The four main steps

Each subproblem then goes through the steps of analysis, solution convergence, and implementation as shown below.

Lets compare the four main steps of SIP to the four main steps of Classic Activism, which is the problem solving process used by environmentalists today:

Classic Activism

1. Identify the problem
2. Find the proper practices
3. Tell people the truth about them
4. If that fails, inspire, exhort, and bargain

In step 2 of Classic Activism, the proper practices are the practices required to live sustainably, like renewable energy, less pollution, and supporting the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Not only does Classic Activism fail to use proper decomposition. It also has no analysis step. This huge flaw is the second reason the world has been unable to solve the sustainability problem. Without deep analysis, how can you possibly solve a difficult problem?

The heart of the analysis step of SIP is root cause analysis. This powerful tool allows us to implement:

Our Fundamental Principle

The only way to solve a difficult problemis to resolve its root causes.

In order to do this it's necessary to add:

The five substeps of analysis

These are listed below. Note how the substeps use feedback loop modeling to find the root causes and then the high leverage points for resolving the root causes. The analysis step is so difficult and crucial it's where you should spend about 80% of your time. If your root causes and high leverage points are reasonably correct, then steps 3 and 4 will be relatively easy. But if your analysis is wrong, no amount of brilliant hard work in steps 3 and 4 will solve the problem.

1. Find the immediate cause of the subproblem symptoms
in terms of the system’s dominant feedback loops.

Why has environmentalism failed to solve the sustainability problem from the perspective of SIP?

Once you grasp how SIP works, you will see it contains the minimum steps required to solve the problem. All three subproblems are required. Root causes must be found for each subproblem. So must the high leverage points. Then, once analysis is complete the solution convergence and implementation steps can follow.

This raises the question, how many of the 23 steps of SIP has the environmental movement performed? The answer is shown below:

As SIP sees it, problem solvers have completed only 2 steps. Both were admirably done by The Limits to Growth in 1972. But what have the super sleuth’s of the world been doing since then? Where are the results for the rest of the process or one something like it? I’ve searched for years, but they are nowhere to be found. Instead, what we find are the artifacts of Classic Activism, like what should be done and why we have to do it and please let’s do it now, because if we don’t….

Still, Jay Forrester, the Club of Rome, Dennis and Donella Meadows, Jorgen Randers, and the rest of the 17 person Limits to Growth team pulled off a precocious miracle. They spotted a problem few had noticed and wrestled it into a form that allowed them to complete the first two steps.

Summary of Analysis Results

Over a seven year period Thwink.org developed SIP and applied it to the sustainability problem. The results are shown below:

Every difficult problem requires some type of process to solve it. If all you do is solve problems, then your problem solving process is your most valuable asset. It's even more important than your people, because without a stellar process, even stellar people cannot solve truly difficult problems.

This fact has not escaped the attention of science and business. Here's a few of the more prominent processes they depend on:

The Scientific Method, a five step process that forms the foundation of all of science.

The evolutionary algorithm, a natural process identified by Charles Darwin in 1859 in his On the Origin of Species. For more see The Cycle of Evolution.

Double entry accounting, a process for tracking and understanding the flow of money in business. Without it business would be unable to calculate the profitability of a decision. Profits could not be calculated, which means dividends could not be paid.

DNA sequencing, a complex process for determining the makeup of a molecule of DNA. This process has become the core of genetic engineering because it offers a map to what you have and where you want to go.

Six Sigma, a quality improvement process. According to iSixSigma, "General Electric, one of the most successful companies implementing Six Sigma, has estimated benefits on the order of $10 billion during the first five years of implementation."

The mass production assembly line, first perfected by Henry Ford in 1908 to 1915 for production of the Model T automobile. The new process allowed production of the world's first affordable car, one that could be widely purchased by the middle class.

Are you as concerned as we are about the rise of populust authoritarians like Donald Trump? Have you noticed that democracy is unable to solve important problems like climate change, war, and poverty? If so this film series is for you!

Why is democracy in crisis? One intermediate cause is a weakened Voter Feedback Loop. Powerful root cause forces are working to weaken the loop.

The most eye-opening article on the site since it was written in December 2005. More people have contacted us about this easy to read paper and the related Dueling Loops videos than anything else on the site.

Do you every wonder why the sustainability problem is so impossibly hard to solve? It's because of the phenomenon of change resistance. The system itself, and not just individual social agents, is strongly resisting change. Why this is so, its root causes, and several potential solutions are presented.

The analysis was performed over a seven year period from 2003 to 2010. The results are summarized in the Summary of Analysis Results, the top of which is shown below:

Click on the table for the full table and a high level discussion of analysis results.

The Universal Causal Chain

This is the solution causal chain present in all problems. Popular approaches to solving the sustainability problem see only what's obvious: the black arrows. This leads to using superficial solutions to push on low leverage points to resolve intermediate causes.

Popular solutions are superficial because they fail to see into the fundamental layer, where the complete causal chain runs to root causes. It's an easy trap to fall into because it intuitively seems that popular solutions like renewable energy and strong regulations should solve the sustainability problem. But they can't, because they don't resolve the root causes.

In the analytical approach, root cause analysis penetrates the fundamental layer to find the well hidden red arrow. Further analysis finds the blue arrow.Fundamental solution elements are then developed to create the green arrow which solves the problem. For more see Causal Chain in the glossary.

This is no different from what the ancient Romans did. It’s a strategy of divide and conquer. Subproblems like these are several orders of magnitude easier to solve because you are no longer trying (in vain) to solve them simultaneously without realizing it. This strategy has changed millions of other problems from insolvable to solvable, so it should work here too.

For example, multiplying 222 times 222 in your head is for most of us impossible. But doing it on paper, decomposing the problem into nine cases of 2 times 2 and then adding up the results, changes the problem from insolvable to solvable.

Change resistance is the tendency for a system to resist change even when a surprisingly large amount of force is applied.

Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem, because if the system is resisting change then none of the other subproblems are solvable. Therefore this subproblem must be solved first. Until it is solved, effort to solve the other three subproblems is largely wasted effort.

The root cause of successful change resistance appears to be effective deception in the political powerplace. Too many voters and politicians are being deceived into thinking sustainability is a low priority and need not be solved now.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We need to inoculate people against deceptive false memes because once people are infected by falsehoods, it’s very hard to change their minds to see the truth.

Life form improper coupling occurs when two social life forms are not working together in harmony.

In the sustainability problem, large for-profit corporations are not cooperating smoothly with people. Instead, too many corporations are dominating political decision making to their own advantage, as shown by their strenuous opposition to solving the environmental sustainability problem.

The root cause appears to be mutually exclusive goals. The goal of the corporate life form is maximization of profits, while the goal of the human life form is optimization of quality of life, for those living and their descendents. These two goals cannot be both achieved in the same system. One side will win and the other side will lose. Guess which side is losing?

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause follows easily. If the root cause is corporations have the wrong goal, then the high leverage point is to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

The world’s solution model for solving important problems like sustainability, recurring wars, recurring recessions, excessive economic inequality, and institutional poverty has drifted so far it’s unable to solve the problem.

The root cause appears to be low quality of governmental political decisions. Various steps in the decision making process are not working properly, resulting in inability to proactively solve many difficult problems.

This indicates low decision making process maturity. The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to raise the maturity of the political decision making process.

In the environmental proper coupling subproblem the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. Environmental impact from economic system growth has exceeded the capacity of the environment to recycle that impact.

This subproblem is what the world sees as the problem to solve. The analysis shows that to be a false assumption, however. The change resistance subproblem must be solved first.

The root cause appears to be high transaction costs for managing common property (like the air we breath). This means that presently there is no way to manage common property efficiently enough to do it sustainably.

The high leverage point for resolving the root cause is to allow new types of social agents (such as new types of corporations) to appear, in order to radically lower transaction costs.

Solutions

There must be a reason popular solutions are not working.

Given the principle that all problems arise from their root causes, the reason popular solutions are not working (after over 40 years of millions of people trying) is popular solutions do not resolve root causes.

This is Thwink.org’s most fundamental insight.

Summary of Solution Elements

Using the results of the analysis as input, 12 solutions elements were developed. Each resolves a specific root cause and thus solves one of the four subproblems, as shown below:

Click on the table for a high level discussion of the solution elements and to learn how you can hit the bullseye.

The 4 Subproblems

The solutions you are about to see differ radically from popular solutions, because each resolves a specific root cause for a single subproblem. The right subproblems were found earlier in the analysis step, which decomposed the one big Gordian Knot of a problem into The Four Subproblems of the Sustainability Problem.

Everything changes with a root cause resolution approach. You are no longer firing away at a target you can’t see. Once the analysis builds a model of the problem and finds the root causes and their high leverage points, solutions are developed to push on the leverage points.

Because each solution is aimed at resolving a specific known root cause, you can't miss. You hit the bullseye every time. It's like shooting at a target ten feet away. The bullseye is the root cause. That's why Root Cause Analysis is so fantastically powerful.

The high leverage point for overcoming change resistance is to raise general ability to detect political deception. We have to somehow make people truth literate so they can’t be fooled so easily by deceptive politicians.

This will not be easy. Overcoming change resistance is the crux of the problem and must be solved first, so it takes nine solution elements to solve this subproblem. The first is the key to it all.

B. How to Achieve Life Form Proper Coupling

In this subproblem the analysis found that two social life forms, large for-profit corporations and people, have conflicting goals. The high leverage point is correctness of goals for artificial life forms. Since the one causing the problem right now is Corporatis profitis, this means we have to reengineer the modern corporation to have the right goal.

Corporations were never designed in a comprehensive manner to serve the people. They evolved. What we have today can be called Corporation 1.0. It serves itself. What we need instead is Corporation 2.0. This life form is designed to serve people rather than itself. Its new role will be that of a trusted servant whose goal is providing the goods and services needed to optimize quality of life for people in a sustainable manner.

What’s drifted too far is the decision making model that governments use to decide what to do. It’s incapable of solving the sustainability problem.

The high leverage point is to greatly improve the maturity of the political decision making process. Like Corporation 1.0, the process was never designed. It evolved. It’s thus not quite what we want.

The solution works like this: Imagine what it would be like if politicians were rated on the quality of their decisions. They would start competing to see who could improve quality of life and the common good the most. That would lead to the most pleasant Race to the Top the world has ever seen.

Presently the world’s economic system is improperly coupled to the environment. The high leverage point is allow new types of social agents to appear to radically reduce the cost of managing the sustainability problem.

This can be done with non-profit stewardship corporations. Each steward would have the goal of sustainably managing some portion of the sustainability problem. Like the way corporations charge prices for their goods and services, stewards would charge fees for ecosystem service use. The income goes to solving the problem.

Corporations gave us the Industrial Revolution. That revolution is incomplete until stewards give us the Sustainability Revolution.

This analyzes the world’s standard political system and explains why it’s operating for the benefit of special interests instead of the common good. Several sample solutions are presented to help get you thwinking.

Note how generic most of the tools/concepts are. They apply to far more than the sustainability problem. Thus the glossary is really The Problem Solver's Guide to Difficult Social System Problems, using the sustainability problem as a running example.